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What Metview version is required?

Metview versions 4.4.46. or later are required.

What VAPOR Version is required?

Version 2 (2.2.2 and later are ) is supported.

How to set up the Metview Vapor interface?

To make this interface work Metview has to be started up with the MV_VAPOR_HOMEBIN environmental variable set to the the location directory of the VAPOR installationexecutables.

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VAPOR stands for Visualization and Analysis Platform for Ocean, Atmosphere, and Solar Researchers. It is a software system providing an interactive 3D visualization environment that runs on most UNIX ,Windows and Mac systems equipped with modern 3D graphics cards. The home of the software is https://www.vapor.ucar.edu :

How to use VAPOR with Metview?

VAPOR has it own internal data model and NWP data has to be converted into the VAPOR format.  There are a set of command line tools that can convert NetCDF input data into the VAPOR format but there is no such tool available for GRIB.

Metview's VAPOR Prepare icon helps to overcome this difficulty and allows converting ECMWF GRIB data into the VAPOR format.

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Once the data has been converted just right-click Visualise the VAPOR Prepare icon to start up VAPOR with the newly created dataset

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VAPOR data files

VAPOR input data is described by .vdf (VAPOR data Format) files. These are XML files containing the name and dimension all the variables and the path of the actual data files storing the data values.  VAPOR stores its actual data values in .vdc (VAPOR Data Collection) files. These are NetCDF files containing wavelet compressed 3D data. There is a separate file for each variable and timestep organized into a folder hierarchy.

The input data must be defined on  a 3D grid,  which has to be regular horizontally. The vertical grids are described here.

VAPOR uses a right-handed coordinate system which means that :

• the horizontal grid has to start at the SW corner
• the vertical coordinates have to increase along the z axis (upwards).

VAPOR vertical grids

Vertically the input 3D data can be:

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Usage at ECMWF

At ECMWF VAPOR is installed and the Metview VAPOR interface is set up properly on the Linux desktops.

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